


she does what she wills

by pettiot



Series: progress!verse [2]
Category: Final Fantasy XII
Genre: F/M, Wild West AU, period typical race issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-03-19
Updated: 2009-03-19
Packaged: 2021-02-28 20:40:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,395
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23213422
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pettiot/pseuds/pettiot
Summary: How Basch and Fran first met.
Relationships: Basch/Fran
Series: progress!verse [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1668958





	she does what she wills

Her mother's people do not ride.

Others of this land will – those to the north where the wilderness runs as free as the horses, those to the far south where young men fight for status instead of survival. But this is Archades's frontier, and her mother's people do not ride lest they be tracked by the trail of their horses.

Despite that Fran can ride, despite that she was taken so young from her mother's people, despite that on her return she has no place, status, home or claim to personhood, nor even claim to her mother's name, neither can she.

* * *

Her mother's people run the Imperial soldier down on foot. His horse only buys him time, not freedom. Her mother's people are so skilled at the chase – but, even forest-bound, contorting to avoid branches as well as bows, so is the man. Tempers are untethered by the time the gap between hunter and hunted narrows.

Fran runs with her mother's people, awkward still for the remnant mark of Imperial shackle and over-sea slavery about her ankles and heels. Fran lived so long amongst that Imperial blood: she is prohibited from taking up a weapon. She keeps pace strictly that everyone may note her uselessness as another mark against her name.

When the man falls, toppling when his mount dies, his hat is dislodged, his cloak.

Fran sees the rich black spill of his hair, the braveness of bearing.

' _Basch_ —' She approaches, ignores the warning hiss of the hunt's leader, pushes her own hair back that she can see their prey better, a face known from dusty newspapers, from chalky sketches sold by the long road she had thought set behind her, 'Captain Basch fon—?'

He has fifteen spears about his broad ribcage, not exactly hovering, he is on his back and arched, with leaf mulch in his hair and blood on his lips, and he still manages to tip his head, lift his hand, an indicator and a nod born of an alien culture's courtesy.

'A pleasure to make your acquaintance,' he says, strained.

* * *

Convincing her mother's people that this provident man of writ and legend is better left alive leaves Fran without whatever place she had managed to earn back these long, lonely months of her return. She notes at the supper that even Basch, bound ankle to ankle, wrist to wrist, and a rope running between that he must strain so his mouth can meet his spoon, is served before she.

He is given no accommodation against the night. By speaking for his life, she has claimed him. Or he has claimed her. Often, she forgets what lore her mother tried to impart regarding the cost of certain words. She takes him within, and will not touch him even to assist his bound contortion under her lintel. He does not question her, nor complain about his ropes.

Custom and law proves such a strange invention when considered how it is common to both her birth people and those that took her away. Fran wonders if any a people alive has ever lived for what is right first and foremost before the application of arbitrary custom, distinction, and definitions of rightness.

'You must have such a strange story,' Basch says, once settled on the far side of her tent, lamplight burnishing dark hair, thick stubble. His fingers flex, calm, not spasmodically. 'To speak our language so fluidly. I should like to see your tale.'

'You have stranger stories,' Fran responds. 'I have read your writings, Captain.'

He is startled, bewildered, flattered.

'You spin such tales,' Fran continues, 'I will not ask you why you were broaching our lands; I expect from your lips only falsehood.'

Unexpectedly, Basch grins.

'Lady.' He is suddenly sombre, mockingly so, and his words riding on the wake of hers twist beyond reason. 'Your wit is matched only by your beauty.'

Fran does not forget how a Imperial's imported tongue can snake — but words aside, Basch succeeds in startling her.

She has forgotten what it means to be looked in the eye by a man.

* * *

'Should there be no demons in your country,' Fran whispers, 'your leaders invent them – not many, two or three, devious rather than clever, so they can be beaten, and above all, they must be distinguishable—'

'Your ears,' Basch murmurs, his breath warm to stir that fur, 'your whiteness, your tail, your skin – they are distinguishable –'

'Elsewhere it is the same,' Fran says, inches away from Basch's sun-ruddy throat, 'I have seen the capital and Archades' subcontinents, where black demons, bright pink demons, yellow ones are named and called out in the street, all pigmentation irrespective but that it must be distinct against the colour of countless grains of sand—'

Basch's hand wanders, finds where her tunic threads tangle, but he hovers, hesitates, does not touch. 'You have been more privileged than I, lady. I was born on this land, unhappy and conflicted as she proves, yet I have no wish to ever leave.'

Fran interposes her own hand. Inches between them. Only inches, but a chasm of distance, of difference. 'Next,' she instructs, 'your people interpose any form of border to clarify all ambiguous terms. An ocean, where possible. A mountain range. The line of the great green wood, beyond which becomes our sanctuary, and your definite hell. I do so wonder why you want to broach these woods lands when all your literature tells of only the hell on earth to be found in our domain.'

Basch is amused, intent, not disgruntled. His eyes are only ever on hers. 'My people are starving, milady, are born starving: for contact, connection, for common ground. And now, when every wind blows half the dry land out to sea, we are starving for that most base and necessary of substances. If trees can grow, then crops will also; beyond the border of the wood – a border which betrays itself simply by being – we know your people hold all the fertile land. Will you withhold your fecundity for a matter of propriety? It is not spoken of, but we are starving!'

'Your people are starving because they cut down the trees. Should my mother's people cede their boundaries, you will rape the land of what little it can offer, and move on when fertility fades. We will be left only with such dust as your people have discovered.'

'I am not a farming man,' Basch admits. His fingers are scant inches away from her crown, to set her scalp crawling as he ghosts her hair. 'I cannot winnow the chaff from the grain of your words. But I do wish to hear you say more.'

'Why,' Fran pulls back, allows the anger to rise in her voice at last, at last, 'that you may paraphrase me in your texts? That you may laud my people's further intelligence and right to be simply by how you have measured the lengths and depths of a single broken woman?'

Basch reaches out.

'That I may listen,' he reprimands, simply. 'So that I may know you.'

* * *

Her mother's people would have her say no to this, shunned her further for it, expelled her, but she has already been expelled once, taken back reluctantly. Her mother's people do not speak to her unless necessary. They will not speak to her even to instruct her in denial.

Her adoptive people would have her say no to this also, and mocked her had she said yes. A woman's virtue is her father's to deliver intact directly to her husband – yet Fran's adoptive family kept such impropriety hidden below layers of aristocracy, a word she learned as a synonym for hypocrisy. Fran was never possessed of father or husband by an Imperial’s definition; Fran finds little virtue in their rules of conduct.

Nevertheless, she is not a creature made to spite another. She avoids all question of saying 'yes' or 'no' to Basch by moving first. Her hands are on his rope-burned wrists, the rope in frayed pieces from her claws, his clothes left in scarcely a better state. Her right nipple cedes firmness but not arousal to the warmth of his mouth; her thighs offer a like warmth where she pins the rigor of his own clear desire, and mounts him.

Her mother's people do not ride, no, but Fran does what she will.


End file.
